When the Glass Really is Empty: WWMD
A sermon on John 2:1-22 and Isaiah 62:1-5 for Epiphany 2, 2025, Preached at St Paul's, Ashgrove
Being asked to change water into wine is
Well
An occupational hazard for clergy. It is one of those jokes that the people think is original.
Every time!
“Hey Vicar, we need more wine. How about it!”
We learn to smile and nod.
But it isn’t always a joke. Sometimes we are genuinely expected to turn metaphorical water into wine – to provide a magical fix for an intractable problem. A magical fix that does not require any effort or changed behaviour.
It happens to all of us, I’m sure, Not just clergy. Family and friends present us with their difficulties and, in their desperation, expect us to have exactly the right words to make everything better, or to somehow come up with the perfect solution that has eluded everybody else. But we can’t.
And then we feel that we have failed,
Because we can’t fix everything for the people we love.
Because we can’t turn water into wine.
There are flavours of this that are particular to clergy, (like the expectation that we should be able to make a thriving children’s ministry appear out of nothing)
but all of us
if we are people of empathy and compassion
carry the burden of not being able to fix the world for the people we love
of not being able to change water into wine.
So, most times when we encounter this expectation it is not a joke at all. It is a heartbreaking reality. It is a moment when life brings us into violent collision with our limitations.
And if we are honest, most times when we encounter the expectation that we should change water into wine, it isn’t other people’s expectation we are dealing with, it is our own. We tell ourselves that we ought to be able to fix everything – we wish that were true - but some things just can’t be fixed.
And, to mix drinking metaphors, we are always trying to be positive, optemistic “glass half full” people, but sometimes the glass really is empty.
Like at Cana. At this wedding there were a lot of empty glasses.
Weddings back then were like weddings today - only more so. Hospitality would be lavish. Families would try to outdo each other by providing the most impressive food and drink. They would save for years to put on a wedding all their neighbours would remember. And these celebrations could go on for days. So you can imagine how much food and drink the family had to provide!
And to run out of food or drink… that was social disaster.
At this wedding in Cana, it seems that Jesus’ mother was very close to the family because she seems to be one of the first to discover the shameful truth. And she takes this shameful secret to her wise, resourceful son. “They have no more wine”, she says. And Jesus tells her that his hour has not yet come.
Readers who have read to the end of John’s Gospel and have come back to the beginning for another round know what Jesus means by his hour. His hour is the time of his death and glory.
That is his answer, but it’s not immediately obvious what Jesus’ death has to do with what people are drinking at a wedding.
The author wants us to stop and ponder that question. That’s why he doesn’t make it clear.
We can make one immediate connection between wine and Jesus’s death. We drink a sip of wine each Sunday as we remember Jesus’s death for us. The author of John’s Gospel might have been thinking about Holy Communion as he shaped his telling of this story. Or he might not. But he certainly was thinking about all the wedding imagery in the Old Testament.
Isaiah 62 looks forward to the great day when Jerusalem would be saved and vindicated and glorified; when the shame of subjugation and defeat will be gone forever. And the image Isaiah uses to describe the great celebration is a wedding:
as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you.
According to the Old Testament prophets, the day when God saves and delivers is like a wedding celebration. There is a lot of that in the Old Testament. A lot of celebration! And a lot of excellent wine.
So… weddings and feasting and wine are images the prophets used to describe the day when God would show up to put everything right. And the opposite is also true. Distress and defeat and exile are described using images of wine running out – as in Isaiah 24:
7 The wine dries up,
the vine languishes,
all the merry-hearted sigh.
So… the son of God turns up at a wedding and is told that the wine has run out. This was a genuinely distressing situation for one family. But it was ALSO symbolic of the people of God living in defeat and distress and exile – not living in the full lavishness of God’s restoration of all things.
So there were two problems: One small, contained problem for a particular family and one huge problem for the whole world.
Jesus speaks first at that bigger, metaphorical level when he says says, “My hour has not yet come”. His hour will come to address the big problem. A few years after this wedding, through his death and resurrection he will begin a process that will lead to the restoration of all things. He will initiate that great cosmic party that Isaiah looked forward to. That hour will come soon enough for him. But as he sat with his mother, with an empty wine glass in his hand, that hour had not yet come.
But in the meantime he could do something about the small problem. The social disaster. The empty wine jugs. He could turn an enormous amount of water into the finest wine any of them had ever tasted. He could do that. And because he cared about that family and their embarrassment, and their desire to celebrate well, he did do that.
As we all begin a new year together, I’d say most of us are aware that in some ways we are also holding empty glasses – as a parish and as individuals. We are holding our embarrassing failures, the unmet needs of the people we love, our own unwillingness to admit that we just can’t turn water into wine. In these ways, we stand with the family at the wedding where the wine ran out. We share their embarrassment and their powerlessness.
Like them, we need help. But can this story help us?
Do you remember those bracelets that were popular about a decade ago that said “WWJD: What would Jesus do?”
What would Jesus do?
That isn’t always that helpful a question, is it?
What would Jesus do at a wedding where the wine has run out?
Jesus would turn water into wine.
Great! But how does that help us? We can’t do what Jesus would do. We can’t change water into wine.
What would Jesus do with a family member who is terribly unwell?
I suppose he would heal them. So we try, but we find there are lots of situations where we can’t do what Jesus would do.
But we can always do what Mary would do. That is the practical lesson for us from this passage. Not so much WWJD as WWMD We only need to change one letter on that bracelet. What would Mary do? What would Jesus’ mother do?
The first thing Jesus’ mother did was to take the problem to Jesus. And we are called to do that too.
However big or small. We take our problems to him. We take our family’s problems to him. And sometimes he will say ‘not yet’. This one will be solved at the restoration of all things. There will be a time when every tear is dried, and every illness healed. But not yet.
But sometimes, even in the short term, he will turn the water of our lives into wine – if we hand it over to him.
We might be feeling empty and insufficient as we start a new year – depleted, used up. We prayed all our prayers last year. We gave all the grace and forgiveness we had to give. We served with all the strength we had. We held out open arms to the wider community until those arms ran out of strength. So, we start a new year with nothing but our empty hands – our empty wine glasses.
So, we take our empty glasses to Jesus. We offer ourselves to God in this empty state, and say “Here we are. Such as we are.” And we let Jesus fill the emptiness in whatever way he chooses.
What would Mary do? She would take the problem to Jesus.
Mary also instructed the servers to do whatever Jesus told them to do.
And we are called to do that too. We don’t have the answers. But he does. We don’t have the power. But he does. We are inadequate – but that’s OK because it isn’t about us. We are just signposts pointing people to Jesus, saying, “Do whatever he says!”
So, as we speak with the people around us, let’s not waste time trying to argue them into our particular way of reading the Bible or praying. Let’s do what Mary would do. Let’s just point people to Jesus. Maybe give them a Bible or a copy of one of the Gospels and let them engage with Jesus for themselves.
[There are some copies of Luke’s Gospel at the back of the church. Please take one if you don’t have a Bible at home, or if you know someone you could give a Gospel to.]
WWMD: What would Mary do if she were us?
She would take all those feelings of emptiness and inadequacy to Jesus without shame or judgment;
And she would encourage the people around to do whatever Jesus says – whether or not he fills their glasses.
That’s all.
And as we do that, we let Jesus transform what Jesus chooses to transform, while we wait for the day when our beautiful, broken world will be fully healed and restored, when every voice will confess Jesus as Lord, and every glass will be full of the very best wine we have ever tasted. Amen
With Love from Rev Margaret
Thank you Margaret.